Early merchant and diverse other vessels - Naval warfare and warships - Ancient and Medieval - Mediterranean and Indian Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Roman Shipboard Weapons I

Rams

The earliest rams, which emerged in the mid-ninth century
BC, transformed warfare on water from an encounter between armed men on
vessels, to a battle between the vessels themselves for the ram made the ship
that mounted it into the weapon, a guided missile no less. The earliest rams
were pointed, logically enough, intended to make a hole in an enemy hull at or
below the waterline and thereby cause it to become swamped and disabled. A
matter to note is that although it is convenient to speak of ‘sinking’ ships by
ram attack, insofar as our current general concept is of a holed ship plunging
below the surface to the sea floor, this was not so for ancient warships. These
ships were, of course, made entirely of wood, which has latent buoyancy. The
heaviest item of the ship was the crew, who could be depended upon to get out
of a stricken ship. That they did so is perhaps proved by exception in that
there survive accounts of occasions when crews did not manage to escape, and
which were notable enough to deserve special mention in the ancient sources.
The ram itself was a metal covering mounted upon the forefoot of the ship hull,
to protect it when it came into contact with a target. The fore structure of
the ship itself was designed with timbers projecting forward to carry the ram
and strengthened to withstand the impact and to transmit and spread the shock
of ramming back along the hull. The integrity of the hull was further
protected, at least by the time of the Athenian trireme, by closing the bow of
the hull behind the structure that carried the ram, forming in effect, a
bulkhead.

The metal covering or casting which was the ram, if it had
not twisted or fallen off as a result of damage, was of insufficient weight to
drag the ship down and thus a ship holed at or below the waterline by a ram
attack would ship water and settle to the level dictated by the buoyancy of the
wood from which it was made. It was a perk of the victor in a naval battle to
tow away wrecked (or ‘sunken’) enemy ships, to be beached and repaired. The
wrecks of over a thousand merchant ships from the ancient world have been
located to date, all sunk by the weight of their cargo, but not one seagoing
warship has yet been found, with the exception of two Carthaginian ships found
in mud off western Sicily, ironically loaded with cargoes of stone, which held
them down.

It was found that the early pointed rams had a tendency to
become ensnared by the fibres of the edges of the timbers that they had pierced.
This resulted in the attacker becoming trapped against its intended victim or
in the ram being pulled off as the attacker tried to withdraw, leaving it
probably as badly damaged as the victim. If it could not disengage, the
attacker would in turn be assaulted by the crew of the stricken ship who had
the ultimate motivation for a successful boarding counter-attack.

The ram evolved, and by the sixth century BC had become
blunted at the end. Greek pottery shows it shaped in the form of a boar’s head
or a ram’s head. The purpose of this development was to push or stove in a
section of enemy hull, rather than trying to make a hole, thereby disrupting
the integrity of the hull and permit the ingress of water. As ships grew in
size and required larger castings for their rams, these also developed further,
presumably also as a result of experience in battle. By the early fifth century
BC the face of the ram had developed horizontal vanes, on either side of a
vertical central spine, designed to cut through the grain and joints of an
enemy’s hull timbers. This form of ram, of which examples have been found, was
a casting with a hollow socket at the rear shaped to fit over and be fixed to
the waterline wales and stempost of the ship. This was the weapon of the trireme
age and obviously very effective. The form continued in use throughout the
growth of the super warships of the ensuing Hellenistic period, which in turn
needed increasingly large castings to fit those ships.

As to the relative sizes of the rams fitted to warships,
comparison can be made by comparing the size of their sockets; thus the ram
fitted to the replica trireme Olympias had a socket 27.5 inches (700 mm) in
width, while that of the Athlit ram, from a quadrireme, measured 33 inches (840
mm). Many rams from different sizes were taken from captured ships after the
battle of Actium and mounted on Augustus’ victory monument at Nicopolis; the
sockets there range in size from 40 inches (1,020 mm) to a massive 5 feet (1.51
m) in width, some of the mounting sockets being over 5 feet 6 inches (1.7 m) in
height. The smallest of these is considered to be from a quinquereme, with the
largest from a dekares or ‘ten’.

With the elimination of other navies, the Imperial navy’s
opponents changed from armoured hulls to the lightly constructed open ships of
the barbarian raiders and the shape of their rams changed to deal with this
different type of ship. By the early second century AD an upward curving,
scythe-like ram had been developed, sheathed in metal but without the blunt,
vaned end and intended to ride up and over an enemy bulwark and crush or
submerge it, rather like an icebreaker breaking through ice. This form remained
in service up to the end of the western empire and beyond. There is some
evidence to suggest that a modified form was used by the northern fleets, being
a short, possibly square in section, pointed ram. In the rougher northern
waters, such a form could serve either to ride over and swamp or to pierce an
enemy, doing damage at whatever point it struck. Even in the Mediterranean
however, the sea conditions and/or violent battle manoeuvres could cause a ram
attack to hit the side of an enemy anywhere from below the waterline, if heeled
away, to as high as the thranite oarsmen.

Fire weapons

Fire weapons were, unsurprisingly, little used by ancient
warships, which were made of wood with natural fibre cordage, their hulls payed
with wax and pitch, in a Mediterranean summer they could hardly be more
flammable. There is no record or evidence of cooking facilities aboard the
ships, although small oil lamps were carried for navigation and signalling. In
190 BC a Rhodian squadron was trapped in a harbour near Ephesus by the Syrian
fleet of Antiochus. The latter landed a strong force of troops behind the harbour,
forcing the Rhodians to man their ships and attempt a break-out from the
harbour. The superior enemy fleet was waiting to pick them off piecemeal as
they emerged from the narrow harbour mouth and although twenty ships were lost
or captured, seven or more hung flaming braziers from long booms on either side
of their bows, ready to drop them on to any enemy ship that ventured too close;
they dared not and those ships so equipped escaped. It seems that the Romans
and Rhodians had experimented with the braziers during the preceding winter but
decided that the risks outweighed the benefit and their use by the Rhodians in
this instance was driven by desperation. There is a first-century BC graffito
at Alexandria of a ship with such a brazier rigged outboard on a boom, but this
may well be a navigation light or improvised beacon, held well away from the
ship.

As to the use of flaming projectiles, although fire arrows
had long been used on land, the first indication of their use at sea was in 42
BC during the civil wars. A troop convoy, escorted by some triremes, had been
caught crossing the Adriatic, on its way to join Octavian and Antonius. The
wind failed and the transports tied themselves together to form a stable
fighting platform for the troops. Their opponents simply stood off and shot
fire arrows, burning many of the ships, the remainder cutting themselves free
and surrendering. The next occasion (that we know of) when fire arrows were
used was at Actium. Seeking a conclusion of the, thus far, evenly matched
battle, Octavian sent ashore for burning material; this his men used in fire
arrows or tied to javelins and even brought their ships close enough to throw
lighted torches at their enemy. At longer range, they used artillery to hurl
pots of blazing charcoal and pitch. The fires caused on Antonius’ ships were
contained until the wind strengthened and many of his ships were consumed by
fire. It remains notable that there were no fire weapons aboard the ships and
that Octavian had to specifically order them brought from his encampment
ashore. By the late Empire, Vegetius warns of the danger of ‘arrows wrapped in
burning oil, tow, sulphur and bitumen’ and shot from catapults; however, there
are no accounts of the use of such weapons in the reported battles other than
at Actium, nor does Vegetius say that theses missiles were carried aboard
ships, rather than shot from the shore.

The other way that fire was used as a weapon afloat was by
the use of fireships, recorded as used by the Syracusans against the besieging
Athenian fleet in 413 BC: ‘seeking to burn the remainder of the fleet, they
loaded an old merchant vessel with faggots and brands, lighted them and let the
ship go, the wind was blowing right on the Athenians.’ This defines the use of
a fireship, although in this instance, the intended victims managed to push it
clear.

The Romans made use of this tactic in their civil wars and
in 48 BC, an admiral of Pompeius’, having brought with his fleet ships filled
with pitch, pine resin and other flammable materials and having a favourable
wind, launched them against a Caesarian fleet laying in Messina. The attack
succeeded, all thirty-five ships of Caesar’s fleet being burned to the
waterline. A second attack by forty fireships against another Caesarian
squadron, more alert than the former, burned five ships, but Pompeius’ fleet
was itself routed by the counter-attack. Finally, in the last operation by a
joint western and eastern fleet against Vandal-held Carthage in AD 457, their
closely packed fleet and transports were held against the shore by an onshore
wind. Taking advantage of those ideal conditions, the Vandal fleet launched a
fireship attack, following it with a ram attack and destroyed half of the Roman
fleet.

Towers

The earliest surviving account of the mounting of a tower on
a ship was by the Athenians, who built one on a merchant hull to assist in
their siege of Syracuse in 413 BC. Alexander the Great did the same for his
siege of Tyre in 332 BC, as did Marcellus for his assault on Syracuse in 214
BC. In all of these cases, the ships were taken, rowed or towed, to their
desired station and not intended to otherwise move. At the beginning of the
First Punic War, the Romans devised a lighter form of tower with a timber
frame, covered by canvas and which they mounted on the decks of their larger
warships. Quadriremes were the smallest types to be so equipped; towers could
be mounted forward, aft or amidships and even in pairs, one fore and one aft,
on the biggest ships. It may be that towers were also mounted on the very
largest of ships, athwartships in pairs, jettied out beyond the hull on each
side. The evidence for this, in the absence of extant illustrations, is in
Polybius’ account of the battle of Chios in 201 BC between the fleets of Philip
V of Macedon and Rome’s allies, Pergamum and Rhodes. At one stage in this great
battle, the ship of the Pergamene admiral Dionysodorus, a quinquereme, attacked
a Macedonian ‘seven’, missed and brushed along the side of his intended victim.
The latter had quickly withdrawn their oars but Dionysodorus’ ship was not
quick enough and had its starboard oars sheared off and also ‘had the timbers
supporting his towers smashed to pieces…’ This was of course impossible for
towers mounted amidships. Up to six archers, slingers or javelinmen could be
accommodated on each tower, able to shoot down on to an enemy deck.

The towers, as a permanent feature, were heavy enough and
added to top weight, wind drag and thus instability to the ship, and
undoubtedly contributed to the loss of so many ships in storms. They
nevertheless continued in use until the thirties BC, when a new type was
introduced by Agrippa. This was of lighter construction, collapsible and able
to be stowed flat on deck when not in use, to reduce top weight. The canvas coverings
were often painted a distinguishing colour on all the ships of a squadron to
aid in identification; by the later civil war period, they were sometimes
painted to resemble masonry.